The announcement builds on charges filed earlier this year against three other defendants, and officials warned that more indictments are likely as the investigation continues.

Speaking at a news conference, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said the latest case centers on a bribery scheme involving fabricated “ghost” clients — a scam he described as evidence of systemic failure rather than an isolated incident.

“Nobody was minding the shop,” Essayli told reporters when asked about the pattern of fraud. “There’s no vetting. There’s no auditing. There’s no accounting. It was just a rush to push as much money out the door.”

Among those arrested was Michael Young, founder of the Culver City-based nonprofit Home At Last. Prosecutors allege Young used shell companies and rigged bidding processes to misappropriate roughly $12 million in public funds. According to the charges, the misused money helped bankroll a $1 million investment in an upscale nightclub, a nearly $50,000 vacation to Tahiti, and a $140,000 restoration of a classic Chevrolet Impala.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner said Young’s organization has received more than $118 million in public funding for homeless housing programs since 2019, with over $75 million of that flowing through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, commonly known as LAHSA.

A second defendant, Lakiya Malone, worked for the nonprofit Special Service for Groups and was responsible for referring homeless individuals into LAHSA-funded housing programs. Prosecutors say she accepted about $180,000 in bribes from Alexander Soofer, former head of the now-defunct nonprofit Abundant Blessings, in exchange for funneling fake, or “ghost,” clients his way so he could bill for services that were never actually provided.

“She was supposed to guard the money, and instead she took bribes,” Essayli said.

In response, Special Service for Groups issued a statement saying it has cooperated with federal investigators “to ensure that any responsible individuals are held accountable” and has since tightened its internal compliance procedures.

Soofer, whose arrest was first announced in January, has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges. In his plea agreement, he admitted to orchestrating the bribery arrangement and confessed to pocketing at least $2 million in public funds for personal use and for businesses unrelated to homeless services. He has agreed to forfeit that money to the federal government. Investigators had initially alleged Soofer diverted a far larger sum — upward of $10 million.

An earlier investigation revealed that LAHSA continued renewing multimillion-dollar contracts with Soofer’s organization even after its own internal compliance reviewers had flagged the nonprofit as “high-risk,” citing irregularities such as billing for services despite reporting zero enrolled clients.

The third person charged, Donye Mitchell, led the nonprofit Big Blue Umbrella. Prosecutors say Mitchell misrepresented his qualifications to secure a $1.2 million county grant, then used a portion of the roughly $315,000 he received for personal expenses — including bail following a domestic violence arrest and purchases of video games.

Essayli noted that Mitchell is “a convicted fraudster, by the way.” Court records show he was previously convicted in 2011 of defrauding California’s unemployment insurance system and was ordered in 2012 to repay the state $6 million. Despite that history, a county vendor awarded him the grant in question in 2024 — more than a decade after his fraud conviction.

Attorneys for Young and Malone did not immediately respond to requests for comment. It was not immediately clear who is representing Mitchell, whose arrest was disclosed after Wednesday’s press briefing.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman joined Essayli in criticizing what both described as a systemic breakdown in financial oversight of homeless services spending. Hochman pointed to a court-ordered audit released in 2025 that found city officials failed to adequately track $2.3 billion in homelessness funding, largely because the city outsourced much of that responsibility to LAHSA — an agency the audit found had failed to collect reliable data on its vendors or hold them accountable for performance.

“We have not seen the results you would expect for billions of dollars being spent,” Hochman said.

He added that Wednesday’s announcement marks only the start of a broader crackdown, telling reporters that prosecutors expect to bring “many more” cases in the months ahead.

Original source: CalMatters

The post $1 Million in Homeless Aid Diverted to Nightclub, New LA Fraud Charges Allege appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The ruling, made public this week, stems from body-camera footage, sworn statements and internal text messages gathered during litigation over immigration sweeps that rattled Los Angeles neighborhoods in the summer of 2025. U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong upheld an earlier preliminary order finding that Border Patrol and ICE agents cannot simply take someone into custody — even someone suspected of being in the country illegally — without first assessing whether that person is likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained.

“This court finds sufficient evidence that defendants have a continuing policy and practice of making warrantless arrests in violation of the requirement to conduct a flight-risk analysis,” Frimpong wrote.

Federal law allows immigration officers to make warrantless arrests only when they have reasonable grounds to believe a person is in the country unlawfully and is likely to escape before a warrant can be secured. Attorneys representing immigrant rights groups argued that agents routinely skipped that step altogether, instead detaining people first and sorting out their legal status later.

“This ruling is one of the most significant decisions to date in the community’s fight to end the federal government’s cruel and unlawful practice of snatching people off the street and tearing families apart,” said Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

The Department of Homeland Security defended its agents’ conduct, saying in a statement that ICE has legal authority to make arrests under federal statute, using “reasonable suspicion” to investigate immigration status and probable cause to justify detentions in line with the Fourth Amendment. The agency noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has previously sided with it on similar enforcement questions.

The case grew out of a lawsuit filed last year by the ACLU and a coalition of advocacy organizations against the Department of Homeland Security, following a series of high-profile raids across Los Angeles led by former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. DHS attorneys have said those specific operations ended in February, but the broader deportation push under President Donald Trump has only accelerated since then. Nationally, arrests hit their highest point of Trump’s second term in July, with nearly 50,000 detentions recorded, according to the Deportation Data Project. In California, arrests were up more than 15% compared with the same period a year earlier.

One case at the center of the ruling involved a man identified in court records only by his initials, AT, who was detained outside a car wash in Los Angeles on a scorching August day. Body-camera footage shows a Border Patrol agent running up behind him as he stood near a Mazda with a rag and spray bottle in hand. Within seconds, the agent grabbed him by the collar of his Handy J Car Wash shirt.

“Hey, sir, let’s go,” the agent said in Spanish. Confused, the man asked where they were going and told the agent he had documentation. He was handcuffed within ten seconds and driven away in an unmarked Dodge Charger to an ICE processing facility, leaving his cleaning supplies behind on the hood of the car. He was fingerprinted and released later that day once officials realized he was a lawful permanent resident.

The arresting agent’s report claimed AT made “a couple of quick movements” suggesting he might flee — a claim not supported by the body-camera video. The agent also wrote that when asked about his citizenship, AT answered “United States” but appeared “confused and unsure of his answer, similar to people I have arrested previously.” Court records show the agent never attempted to check identification or ask basic background questions before handcuffing him — the kind of assessment federal law requires before a warrantless arrest can be made.

At the same car wash that day, another worker was detained by a different agent. That agent’s report noted the man had complied with instructions, yet later justified the arrest by claiming the man had “disobeyed the agent’s orders” — a contradiction that judges and attorneys pointed to as evidence of the pattern advocates have described. In legal filings, attorneys said roughly 80% of the arrest reports they reviewed either lacked any real flight-risk analysis or relied on boilerplate language that didn’t match the footage.

Frimpong specifically cited that car wash arrest in her ruling, noting stark differences between the government’s written justification and what the video actually showed. She wrote that although agents claimed the worker, identified as EGG, was likely to flee based on alleged “flight from law enforcement,” the footage showed him standing in the same spot throughout the encounter, working, until an agent called him over. “Contrary to the government’s written flight-risk analysis,” the judge wrote, “he did not flee.”

In that same recording, a supervising agent tells the worker, “We’re going to take you in and check that everything is fine. If everything checks out, we’ll let you go” — a comment attorneys say reveals how these operations actually functioned: arrest first, verify later.

Other footage submitted in the case appears to show agents disregarding earlier immigration court decisions altogether. In one clip from September, an agent asks a colleague whether they are still detaining people who already have scheduled immigration court hearings — a circumstance that typically signals a person has already been screened and found not to be a flight risk. Another agent responds, “I don’t care if you have a court date coming up, you’re a custody redetermination case,” indicating that agents were overriding prior judicial findings.

Attorneys representing the detained workers argued that even individuals already moving through the immigration court system, previously released on the presumption that they weren’t flight risks, were being swept up again. Agency policy requires Border Patrol officers to ask about identification, address and other flight-risk indicators before making an arrest, but plaintiffs say body-camera footage repeatedly shows agents skipping that step.

In one August 2025 raid captured on video, Border Patrol agents jumped out of a Penske rental truck to detain people in a Home Depot parking lot in Los Angeles. According to court records, an agent arrested a man identified as Tijerino-Garmendia after writing in his report that the man “stated he did not have any identification indicating his identity or address.” Footage reviewed by attorneys shows the agent never actually asked him those questions.

Similar rulings barring warrantless arrests have been issued by federal judges in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C., though in at least two of those cases, courts later found that agents continued the practice despite the orders.

In the Los Angeles case, Frimpong directed agents to document the “specific and particularized facts” supporting probable cause that a person was likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained. She declined, however, to require agents to document community ties — such as employment, housing or family connections — when flight risk could be shown through other means. She also declined to require documentation of encounters where agents speak with someone but do not make an arrest.

The federal government asked for a two-week delay before the order took effect while it considered an appeal. Frimpong denied that request, stating that the government could not reasonably claim harm from being ordered simply to follow the law.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Judge Rules Immigration Agents Must Halt Warrantless Arrests appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Consider the debate swirling around Police Chief Jim McDonnell. Raman contends that McDonnell has lost the trust of Angelenos, pointing to what she describes as a widespread perception that the department is cooperating too closely with federal immigration agents. Yet she has offered little concrete evidence to back up either claim, and both assertions are shakier than her campaign rhetoric suggests.

Bass, for her part, bears direct responsibility for McDonnell’s tenure. She appointed him to a five-year term in 2024, backed by a City Council vote that included Raman’s support, and has since stood by his efforts to rebuild a department that had been losing officers to attrition.

Not long after that appointment, the Trump administration’s aggressive push to militarize immigration enforcement arrived in full force in Los Angeles, escalating tensions in a way that mirrored confrontations in other Democratic-led cities across the country. That put McDonnell and his department in a difficult spot. LAPD policy since 1979 has barred officers from making stops based solely on suspected immigration status, a rule designed to encourage victims and witnesses — regardless of their legal status — to cooperate with police without fear.

At the same time, the department has a long-standing duty to protect everyone within city limits, a mandate that has occasionally put LAPD officers in the position of shielding ICE agents from angry crowds. Raman and others have criticized this as creating troubling optics, suggesting it makes local police look like they’re siding with federal immigration authorities over immigrant communities.

That criticism misses the point. ICE’s tactics in Los Angeles have been widely seen as heavy-handed and counterproductive, and city leaders are right to push back against those operations at the policy level. But pushing back doesn’t mean standing by while federal agents are assaulted. The LAPD’s obligation to protect and serve extends even to ICE agents whose presence in the city stems from a political agenda out of Washington.

It’s also worth remembering that federal authorities retain the legal right to enforce immigration law, even if the LAPD isn’t obligated to assist them. A useful comparison is marijuana enforcement: city police can’t block DEA agents from doing their jobs, but that doesn’t mean LAPD officers are required to arrest every person smoking a joint on a street corner.

Whatever one thinks of McDonnell’s overall leadership, decisions about his future shouldn’t hinge on the flawed premise that the LAPD must withhold protection from ICE agents just to send a political message. ICE’s approach in Los Angeles deserves criticism — but leaving federal agents exposed to violence isn’t the answer.

If there’s a real case to be made about whether McDonnell should keep his job, it deserves more scrutiny than a campaign talking point can provide. The proper way to judge a police chief is by looking at crime trends, officer conduct and how seriously the department takes allegations of misconduct. Are officers respecting people’s constitutional rights? Is their work actually making Los Angeles safer?

By that measure, McDonnell has some strong results to point to. Los Angeles recorded 230 homicides in 2025 — a drop of 54 from the previous year and the lowest total since 1966. Violent crime and property crime both declined citywide, signaling real progress on public safety.

But there’s a more troubling trend as well: LAPD officers discharged their firearms more than 45 times last year, a 70% jump that resulted in 14 deaths. When Bass raised concerns about the rise in officer-involved shootings, McDonnell pledged that every incident would undergo rigorous review, both through internal investigations and independent oversight.

That commitment is a good sign, and city leaders should hold McDonnell and his command staff accountable for how officers use force — while recognizing that in police work, some use of force is unavoidable and, at times, justified.

Former LAPD Chief Bernard Parks once observed that the department tends to discipline officers frequently but fires too few of them. His broader point remains relevant: no chief can prevent every improper use of force, but a chief can and must set clear expectations and hold officers to them consistently.

Then there’s the question of money, which the mayoral race has muddled rather than clarified. Bass has called for increased funding for the LAPD, while Raman has pushed back — framing the mayor as the department’s defender and herself as its critic. But that framing oversimplifies a complicated issue.

Slashing the LAPD’s budget isn’t an effective response to legitimate criticism of the department, just as simply pouring more money into it won’t fix systemic problems on its own. Still, adequate staffing matters, and budget cuts can sometimes lead to more chaos and confrontation rather than less. Public safety funding should be driven by strategy — reducing crime while ensuring accountability — not used as a political cudgel to punish or reward the department.

The real question voters deserve to hear addressed isn’t whether Jim McDonnell should be fired or whether he has lost the city’s confidence in some abstract sense. It’s whether Bass and Raman can articulate a clear vision for what they want the LAPD to prioritize and how they intend to hold the department accountable to that vision.

From there, civilian leadership — the mayor and City Council — needs to translate that vision into concrete direction for the department. Only then can the LAPD and its chief fairly be judged on whether they’re carrying out that mission effectively and within the bounds of the law.

A police chief who reduces crime, holds officers accountable and genuinely serves the community deserves to keep the job. One who fails on those counts should be replaced. That’s the standard voters should be asking Bass and Raman to meet — not campaign soundbites about confidence and optics.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Mayoral Candidates Spar Over Policing and Police Chief, but Sidestep Other Pressing Issues appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The decision, issued by U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong and unsealed this week, cements a preliminary ruling she first signaled last month. It represents a significant setback for federal immigration enforcement tactics that have drawn intense scrutiny across Los Angeles since aggressive street operations swept through the region in 2025.

The case centers on a basic legal requirement: immigration officers cannot arrest someone without a warrant unless they have probable cause both that the person is undocumented and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant could be secured. Frimpong found overwhelming evidence that agents have been ignoring that second requirement altogether.

“This Court finds ample evidence that Defendants have an ongoing policy and practice of conducting warrantless arrests in violation of the requirement to conduct a likelihood-of-escape analysis,” she wrote.

One case illustrating the pattern involved a man identified only by the initials A.T., a worker at Handy J Car Wash in Los Angeles. Body camera footage from August 2025 shows a Border Patrol agent sprinting toward him as he wiped down a vehicle, then grabbing him by his shirt collar. Within ten seconds, A.T. was in handcuffs, despite telling the agent he had legal documentation. He was placed in an unmarked Dodge Charger and taken to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, where he was fingerprinted and released hours later after officials determined he was a lawful permanent resident.

The agent’s written report claimed A.T. made sudden movements suggesting he might flee — a claim the body camera footage does not support. The agent also noted that A.T. seemed “confused and unsure” when asked about his citizenship, and used that uncertainty to justify the arrest. At no point, according to the footage, did the agent attempt to check identification or ask basic background questions before making the arrest — the type of assessment the law requires.

The lawsuit that led to Frimpong’s ruling was filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and several advocacy organizations, following widely criticized immigration raids across Los Angeles overseen by former Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security have said those large-scale operations ended in February. Still, nationwide arrest numbers have continued to climb under the Trump administration’s expanded deportation push, hitting nearly 50,000 arrests in July — the highest monthly total of the administration, according to the Deportation Data Project. In California, arrests during that period were up more than 15 percent compared with the same time last year.

Attorneys representing those detained say the discrepancies between agents’ official arrest narratives and body camera footage were central to their case. In one example cited in Frimpong’s ruling, an agent claimed a worker identified as E.G.G. had tried to flee — but footage instead shows the man standing in place at the car wash the entire time, from when agents entered the business to when he was called over and detained. A supervising agent is heard on the recording telling the man, “We’re going to give you a ride, and check if everything is OK. If everything is OK, we’ll let you go” — a comment attorneys say reveals a pattern of arresting first and sorting out legal status afterward.

Other footage submitted in the case appears to show agents disregarding determinations already made by immigration courts. In one recording, an agent asks a colleague whether they are still detaining individuals who hold a notice to appear before an immigration judge — a document typically issued to people who have already been found not to pose a flight risk. Another agent responds bluntly that a pending court date does not matter, saying the person is subject to what he called a “custody redetermination.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued this showed agents were not merely failing to perform their own flight-risk evaluations, but actively overriding judicial findings that a person was safe to release.

In another episode captured on video, agents jumped from a rented Penske truck to detain workers in a Home Depot parking lot in August 2025. One man, identified in court records as Tijerino-Garmendia, was reported by the arresting agent as having no identification or verified home address. But according to attorneys, the footage shows the agent never actually asked him those questions — undermining the written justification for the arrest.

Attorneys for the ACLU say such gaps were common. In a review of arrest reports connected to the case, they found that roughly 80 percent lacked any genuine flight-risk analysis, instead relying on generic, repeated language that did not reflect what agents actually observed or asked in the field.

“This ruling is one of the most important decisions to date in the community’s effort to end the federal government’s cruel and illegal practice of abducting people and separating them from their families,” said Mayra Joachin, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

Frimpong’s order requires agents going forward to document specific, individualized facts supporting their belief that a person was likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained. She stopped short, however, of requiring agents to detail community ties — such as employment, housing or family connections — as long as flight risk can be established through other means. She also declined to require documentation in cases where agents question someone but ultimately do not make an arrest.

Similar rulings restricting warrantless immigration arrests have been issued by federal judges in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C. In two of those cases, courts later found that agents continued the practice despite the orders.

The Department of Homeland Security had requested a two-week delay before the new requirements take effect, citing the possibility of an appeal. Frimpong rejected that request, stating that the government could not reasonably claim to be harmed by simply being required to follow the law.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Judge Orders Immigration Agents to Halt Warrantless Arrest Tactics appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The willingness is there. So is a statewide vision for making it happen. California’s new Master Plan for Career Education promises every young person a clear path from the classroom to the workforce. The state’s regional K-16 collaboratives are designed to link high schools, colleges and employers in growing industries. A budget trailer bill signed in July, Senate Bill 172, made the state’s Regional Economic Development Initiatives office a permanent fixture within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, known as GO-Biz. Meanwhile, the California Jobs First initiative is helping regions rethink their economic futures.

The problem isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s coordination.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Los Angeles County, which trains roughly a quarter of California’s students through a sprawling network of 80 school districts, 21 community colleges, five Cal State campuses and seven workforce boards — each of which builds its own relationships with employers.

That fragmentation creates real headaches. A hospital or utility company willing to bring on young interns must wade through separate onboarding rules, insurance requirements and employer-of-record agreements for each program it works with. For students under 18, added questions about labor law, supervision and liability can turn an enthusiastic employer hesitant.

The shortage isn’t one of partners willing to help — it’s that so many good programs are working toward the same goal through entirely separate systems, leaving businesses to figure out how to connect with them.

Students face their own obstacles. Many can’t afford to take an unpaid internship while also working, caring for family or attending school, and funding for paid work-based learning remains limited. The Golden State Pathways Program, for example, doesn’t cover student wages. And the Learning-Aligned Employment Program, once intended to guarantee paid career experience for college students, was scaled back amid state budget cuts.

Regional organizations are stepping up to fill the gap. Last year, the nonprofit UNITE-LA served more than 5,300 Angelenos, worked with 68 employers, and placed 193 people in private-sector jobs or internships. Its L.A. Regional Cleantech Career Academy has helped 281 young adults over the past three years, including 99 who completed paid cleantech training in 2025 alone — nearly 90% of them from communities historically underrepresented in that industry.

The benefits extend to younger students, too. UNITE-LA’s Tech Pathways Academy, run in partnership with L.A. Trade-Tech and West L.A. College, served 97 high schoolers last year, helping them earn college credit and industry credentials while working alongside employers such as Snap and Accenture.

That work has revealed two clear lessons. First, employers are far more willing to participate when a trusted go-between handles the logistics — the compliance, the paperwork, the onboarding. Second, one detail changes everything: a paycheck. Paid opportunities open doors for students who simply can’t afford to work for free.

None of this success happens by chance. It requires a regional intermediary to do what no single school, agency or company can accomplish alone — offering employers one point of contact, standardizing the paperwork, blending public, private and philanthropic dollars to cover student wages, and linking hands-on learning directly to education pathways.

Where that kind of connective tissue exists, employers show up. Where it doesn’t, the answer is too often “maybe next year.”

California already has the major building blocks in place: California Jobs First, the K-16 collaboratives, and the Master Plan for Career Education. What’s missing isn’t another new initiative — it’s the connective work of tying these efforts together so employers and educators aren’t left juggling a dozen separate programs that share the same mission but different rules and timelines.

The state can build on this momentum by investing in the intermediaries and sector partnerships that bring together employers, colleges and workforce agencies under one roof. Apprenticeships remain a valuable model for earn-and-learn training, but true economic mobility requires a broader menu of paid, hands-on learning options — ones that let students gain real experience without giving up a paycheck.

As a new state administration prepares to shape the next chapter of California’s workforce strategy, the boldest step may simply be building on what’s already proving effective. Regions across the state have spent years developing these partnerships and earning the trust that makes them work. What they need now is continuity, not another reset.

The vision has been laid out. The partnerships already exist. The next step is scaling them up — turning every employer’s “maybe next year” into “yes, this year.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Seeks Better Ways to Connect Young Job Seekers With Local Employers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

So when the FIFA World Cup arrived in Los Angeles this year, plenty of skeptics assumed the region’s transit network would buckle under the pressure — and that the 2028 Olympics would be an even bigger disaster waiting to happen.

That’s not quite how it played out. The World Cup came and went without the transit meltdown many predicted. Trains actually connected where they were supposed to. And a system that has frustrated commuters for generations is finally starting to show real signs of maturing into something functional.

Whether Los Angeles’ buses, shuttles and rail lines can handle the far greater test of the Olympics remains an open question, and the stakes are high. A smooth Games could cement LA’s reputation on the world stage and hand a political win to both the governor and the mayor. A stumble, on the other hand, could turn into an international embarrassment for the city and the state.

The good news is that Los Angeles didn’t start from scratch. The push to modernize and expand the region’s transit system has unfolded over decades, drawing on local, state and federal cooperation. But no single figure did more to drive that transformation than former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who led the city from 2005 to 2013.

Villaraigosa wasn’t known as a transit wonk when he took office. A former labor organizer, his political identity was built around social justice, not subway maps. But he came to view public transportation as a tool for stitching together a famously fragmented city, and he used the power of his office to secure funding and push projects forward.

Ever the dealmaker, Villaraigosa worked every angle available to him. He convinced voters to pass Measure R in 2008, a 30-year, half-cent sales tax expected to generate roughly $36 billion for transit improvements over its lifespan.

Even that enormous sum wasn’t enough to cover everything Los Angeles needed, so Villaraigosa brought together labor unions and business leaders to lobby Congress for a new approach — one that would reward local governments willing to raise their own money with matching federal support. That effort led to the creation of the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, known as TIFIA, along with the America Fast Forward program, both of which funneled federal dollars to cities demonstrating their own financial commitment to transit.

These days, Villaraigosa finds himself on the periphery of the political spotlight he once commanded so easily. He finished well behind in June’s gubernatorial primary, losing out to Xavier Becerra — the same rival he beat decisively in the 2001 Los Angeles mayoral race. Political fortunes shift, and after several years away from elected office, Villaraigosa struggled to break through in a crowded field of candidates.

Still, his enthusiasm hasn’t dimmed. In a recent conversation, he ran through his transit accomplishments with the same energetic mix of statistics and storytelling that has always defined him. Asked about the state of transportation in Los Angeles, he launched into a detailed recounting of battles won, deals struck and political relationships carefully managed.

He recalled, for instance, breaking through the federal ban on tunneling through parts of the city with underground methane deposits — a restriction that had stalled transit expansion for years and put him at odds with then-Congressman Henry Waxman.

“He endorsed me,” Villaraigosa said. “I went back to him and said, ‘I would like you and I to select some experts to study this.’ The experts said yes… True to his word, he removed the federal prohibition.”

Then there was the matter of financing. According to Villaraigosa, the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein was initially cool to the idea of a new federal funding mechanism, while Sen. Barbara Boxer was far more receptive. He worked closely with Boxer, and eventually Feinstein came around after what he described as some friendly persistence.

“We had pickets outside her office,” he recalled, clearly still amused by the memory.

Congress ultimately approved both TIFIA and America Fast Forward, and the funding began flowing into Los Angeles. Projects that had been stuck on the drawing board started breaking ground. The Gold Line extension, running from downtown into the eastern part of the city, broke ground in 2009, with Villaraigosa famously posing in the conductor’s seat.

The Foothill Extension came next, pushing the rail line through the San Gabriel Valley. Today known as the A Line, it runs through Pasadena, Arcadia and Azusa, with further eastward expansion still planned.

That opened up the eastern part of the region, but Los Angeles remained a sprawling puzzle with major gaps. The Crenshaw Line, which opened in 2022, cut through South Los Angeles neighborhoods and brought new energy to businesses along its route.

Meanwhile, construction along Wilshire Boulevard — long blocked by that same federal restriction on methane-prone areas — has finally paid off. This spring, LA Metro opened four new stations along the boulevard, linking Koreatown to the Westside and giving Dodger fans in that part of the city a direct rail route to games.

That particular stretch of track took 65 years to complete, made possible only after Villaraigosa’s work with Waxman cleared the way. When it opened, the Los Angeles Times quoted transit experts calling it a “landmark achievement in L.A. public transit history.”

Even then, the network had holes, particularly downtown, where separate lines came agonizingly close without actually connecting. The Regional Connector filled that gap when it opened in 2023, allowing riders to travel from Azusa all the way to Long Beach, and from the eastern edge of the city to the westside, without having to switch systems entirely.

Villaraigosa looks back on that era with obvious pride. “It was a war,” he said — though he meant it as praise, not complaint.

None of this has completely solved Los Angeles’ transit challenges. Ridership collapsed during the pandemic and has been slow to recover. Immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration have further discouraged some riders. And any high-profile crime aboard a bus or train still sends a ripple of anxiety through the system.

But this summer’s World Cup offered a genuine stress test, and the region’s transit network largely passed. Ridership climbed by 2.4 million trips in June compared with the same month last year, with the biggest surges recorded on lines serving stadiums before and after matches. Metro reported no security incidents connected to the tournament.

The Olympics will demand far more. Visitors will pour in from around the globe for a compressed 16-day stretch of competition spread across dozens of venues throughout the region. Someone hoping to catch an event in Carson, another in Long Beach and a third in Pasadena will have little choice but to rely on public transit, since parking near many venues will be extremely limited.

Mayor Karen Bass has framed the Olympics as a chance for Los Angeles’ transit system to prove itself on the world stage. But there’s still work to do before the Games arrive. Metro needs to bring on a large fleet of specialized buses, and several rail lines still require finishing touches.

Perhaps most glaring is the fact that travelers landing at LAX still can’t hop directly onto a train — a gap that has frustrated transit planners for years. But even on that front, progress is finally visible. Empty automated people-mover cars are now making test runs around the airport as engineers work out the system’s kinks. Bass has promised it will be operational well ahead of the Olympics, and Villaraigosa is confident she’s right.

“It’ll go to the airport,” he said, “finally.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post LA’s Transit System Faces Major Test as Olympics Loom appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The admission came after attorneys representing former Carson homeowner Fa’alagilagi Meni-Siliga flagged the errors in motions submitted by State Farm’s legal team. In a court filing, attorney Eric Khodadian, who represents Meni-Siliga, said he uncovered numerous instances of what he called AI “hallucinations” — false legal references that appeared authoritative but had no basis in actual case law.

Meni-Siliga, a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier, sued State Farm along with a contractor, the contractor’s insurer and a public adjuster in July 2024 over the botched rebuilding of her home following a 2020 fire. According to the lawsuit, the blaze left her Carson house uninhabitable, and while repairs were underway, a subsequent storm caused additional water damage. She says delays in getting State Farm’s sign-off on repair work meant the job was never finished.

The fallout, according to court documents filed in January, was devastating. Meni-Siliga and her husband exhausted their savings and retirement funds, filed for bankruptcy, and ultimately lost the home to foreclosure.

“My family and I have lost forever our family home,” she wrote in the filing. “We do not come from money … It took many years and sacrifice for our family to purchase our home.”

State Farm had initially responded to the lawsuit by arguing that negligence on the part of Meni-Siliga, her contractor and the public adjuster was to blame for her losses, and separately contended she missed the legal deadline to file her claim. The case is scheduled for trial in October.

The dispute over AI-generated errors surfaced publicly during an Aug. 7 case management conference in Los Angeles Superior Court, where Khodadian presented his findings. In a subsequent filing, he described a tense scene afterward, saying a State Farm attorney appeared “visibly enraged” and followed him and his co-counsel down a courthouse hallway, repeatedly demanding to see the list of errors they had compiled.

That attorney, Kenneth Katel of the firm Musick, Peeler & Garrett, later filed a formal apology to the court and to Meni-Siliga. Katel said a colleague on the case had used AI tools to help prepare some of the filings without his knowledge. “I was not aware that AI had been used, but as lead trial counsel I accept full responsibility for our filings,” he wrote, adding that the firm has since revised its internal policy on AI use, though he did not detail the changes. Katel pushed back on Khodadian’s account of the hallway confrontation but acknowledged, “it is accurate to say I was upset given the seriousness of the allegations.”

Both Khodadian and Katel declined to comment further when contacted.

The attorney who relied on AI, Jacquelene Robinson, explained in her own filing that she discovered seven case citations across eight separate filings that were entirely fictitious, along with several mistaken case titles and quotations that didn’t actually appear in the cases she referenced. Robinson said she had used an AI research tool called Irys, mistakenly believing it was integrated with her firm’s subscription to Westlaw, a widely used legal research platform, and that it automatically verified citations. That assumption, she acknowledged, was wrong.

A State Farm spokesperson, Tom Hartmann, said the company is reviewing the matter. “State Farm expects its external counsel to conform to the highest level of ethical standards and professionalism, including confirming the accuracy of all legal filings,” he said. Hartmann did not respond to questions about how many outside law firms represent State Farm or whether the insurer vets firms’ AI policies before retaining them.

The episode reflects a growing problem across the legal profession as AI tools become more common in casework. Roughly 41% of law firms and 47% of corporate legal departments now report using generative AI in some capacity, according to a recent industry survey. Stanford law professor Daniel Ho, who studies the issue, said fabricated legal citations — often called hallucinations — have become increasingly common as AI adoption spreads. In research he co-authored last year, Ho found that some legal AI companies had overstated their tools’ ability to produce hallucination-free citations.

A global database tracking AI-related legal errors, maintained by a Paris-based researcher, has logged nearly 1,922 documented cases so far, the majority of them in the United States. Last year, a California attorney was fined a record $10,000 after submitting a legal brief in which 21 of 23 quotations turned out to be fabricated by ChatGPT.

The Meni-Siliga case now adds to a growing list of cautionary tales illustrating the risks of unchecked AI use in the courtroom — and the potential consequences for both attorneys and the clients they represent.

Original source: CalMatters

The post State Farm’s Attorneys Admit to Citing AI-Generated Fake Cases in Los Angeles Lawsuit appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong indicated she is inclined to order agents to stop making warrantless arrests unless they first determine, individually, that a person is both likely undocumented and likely to flee before a warrant could be obtained. That standard has been required under federal law since 1946, but attorneys representing immigrants swept up in recent raids argue agents have been ignoring it altogether.

If finalized, the ruling would rank among the most consequential yet in a sprawling lawsuit challenging immigration enforcement tactics in the Los Angeles area, home to roughly 19 million people. It would force agents to fundamentally change how they approach arrests, requiring them to weigh a person’s ties to the community — including employment, housing and family — before detaining someone without a warrant.

Court records and body-camera footage cited in the case describe a pattern in which supervisors told agents to simply “go out and start detaining people,” resulting in agents targeting individuals with no knowledge of their immigration history. Many of those swept up were confronted at car washes, bus stops and other public places, with attorneys alleging agents relied on the appearance of being Latino as their main basis for stopping people.

Last month, attorneys for the plaintiffs submitted text messages and body-camera recordings showing federal agents using racist language to describe potential targets during Los Angeles-area operations, evidence they say reinforces claims that agents were profiling people based on race rather than any individualized suspicion.

Should Thursday’s tentative ruling be made permanent, Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong would become at least the fifth federal judge nationally to block the administration’s warrantless arrest practices, joining courts in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C. In at least two of those cases, judges found that agents continued using the disputed tactics even after being ordered to stop.

This is not the first time the judge has intervened in the case. In July 2025, shortly after the raids began, she issued an order barring agents from detaining people based on factors such as apparent race, speaking Spanish or type of clothing worn. The U.S. Supreme Court later put that order on hold. Thursday’s ruling takes a different approach — rather than dictating who agents can stop, it would require them to document specific evidence of flight risk before making a warrantless arrest.

The latest ruling stems from a motion filed by attorneys representing immigrants detained during the Los Angeles raids, which began under then-Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and drew national attention for their scale. Though public scrutiny has faded somewhat, the operations have continued into 2026 with less visibility.

Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, among other organizations, reviewed 113 arrest reports submitted as evidence and found that nearly 80% contained no genuine assessment of flight risk, relying instead on boilerplate language.

In several of those reports, agents claimed a person was likely to flee because they supposedly ran from law enforcement, lived in a so-called sanctuary state, ignored commands, or simply because of their “unlawful presence in the United States.”

In multiple instances, the government’s own body-camera footage appeared to contradict the written arrest reports. In one case, an agent wrote that a man was “running in the opposite direction” during a warehouse raid in Pomona. Body-camera video, however, shows the man was not running and had significant mobility limitations, according to court filings.

In another example, an agent reported that a man was “fleeing” during an August 2025 raid at a Home Depot in the Westlake area. Video instead shows the man walking toward the agent while looking at his phone.

Federal officials have defended the warrantless arrests in sworn statements. A Border Patrol supervisor who oversaw the arrest of three men detained at a Pasadena bus stop testified that if a person “voluntarily admits” to being in the country illegally, that alone is sufficient grounds for an arrest without a warrant.

Just Walking the Dogs

As part of their motion, attorneys for the detained immigrants submitted hundreds of additional pieces of evidence, including previously unreleased body-camera footage, internal text messages and formal directives from ICE headquarters.

One video shows a group of federal agents moving through a parking lot before detaining a man walking two small, barking dogs. A woman nearby can be heard trying to explain that the man does have legal documentation — he simply didn’t have it with him because he had only stepped out to walk his dogs. An agent responds that he doesn’t understand. Another tells her, “It’s the law, ma’am,” and suggests she file a complaint with U.S. Border Patrol if she disagrees.

At no point in the footage do agents ask the man about his address, his job or whether he has family in the area — the kind of questions courts have said are required before someone can be arrested without a warrant.

Citing newly disclosed evidence, attorneys for the plaintiffs also argued that immigration officials have deliberately created poor conditions inside detention facilities to pressure detainees into agreeing to voluntary deportation.

One man, identified in a court declaration only by the initials DVV, said that while held at the ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, in San Bernardino County, he was repeatedly pressured to sign a document he did not understand.

“I asked to see the form. The second time, the agents took me to a meeting room where a man told me they would force me to sign if I refused,” DVV wrote in a sworn declaration filed with the court. “When I refused, they brought in a bigger man who said he would make me sign. It felt like they were trying to intimidate me.”

Other evidence submitted in the case points to lasting psychological harm. In one declaration, a tamale vendor who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years described the toll of being held for five months at Adelanto.

“I want to be strong and keep moving forward, but it’s very hard for me. I feel an overwhelming sadness. I’m not the same man I was before my detention. I feel like a stranger to myself. Sometimes I can’t hold back my emotions and I cry for a long time. At night, I can’t sleep,” he wrote.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Federal Judge Moves to Limit Immigration Detention Tactics Used in Los Angeles Raids appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a tentative ruling suggesting she is prepared to require agents operating in Los Angeles and surrounding communities — home to roughly 19 million residents — to make individualized assessments of flight risk before detaining someone without a warrant. If adopted, the order would force a significant shift in how agents have carried out immigration sweeps under the administration’s mass deportation push.

Federal law dating back to 1946 permits warrantless immigration arrests only when officers have probable cause both that a person is in the country illegally and that they are likely to flee before a warrant could be secured. Courts have interpreted this to mean agents must weigh factors such as a person’s job, housing situation, family ties and length of time living in the community.

But according to court records and body-camera footage reviewed in the case, supervisors overseeing raids in Southern California and elsewhere have instead instructed agents to simply “get out and start grabbing people.” Agents have been shown detaining individuals at car washes, bus stops and other public locations without first confirming their immigration status or evaluating whether they were flight risks. Attorneys representing immigrants swept up in the raids also submitted text messages last month showing agents using racial slurs to identify potential targets, arguing this showed enforcement was based largely on the appearance of being Latino.

Should Judge Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong finalize her ruling, she would become at least the fifth federal judge nationwide — joining courts in Oregon, Colorado and Washington, D.C. — to restrict the government’s use of warrantless immigration arrests. In at least two of those cases, agents were later found to have continued the practice despite court orders barring it.

This is not the judge’s first intervention in the case. In July 2025, shortly after the Los Angeles raids began, she issued an order prohibiting agents from stopping individuals based on race, Spanish-speaking ability or type of clothing — an order the U.S. Supreme Court later put on hold. Thursday’s tentative ruling takes a different approach: rather than addressing who agents may stop, it focuses on what information they must gather before deciding to make an arrest without judicial authorization.

The latest ruling stems from a motion filed by attorneys representing immigrants detained during the Los Angeles operation, which began under then-Border Patrol leader Gregory Bovino and has continued into 2026 with less media attention but similar tactics.

Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel reviewed 113 arrest reports obtained through the discovery process and found that nearly 80% either lacked any assessment of flight risk or relied on generic, copy-and-paste language. In several cases, agents cited a person’s “illegal presence in the United States,” claims that someone ran from officers, or the fact that they lived in a state with sanctuary policies as justification for skipping the warrant requirement.

In multiple instances, body-camera footage directly contradicted the written arrest narratives. During a raid at a Pomona warehouse, an agent claimed a man had been “running in the opposite direction,” but footage showed the man was not running and had limited mobility. In another case, from an August 2025 operation at a Home Depot in the Westlake district, an agent wrote that a man was “running away,” though video showed him walking toward the agent while looking at his phone.

In depositions tied to the case, federal officials defended the practice. A Border Patrol supervisor involved in the high-profile detention of three men at a Pasadena bus stop testified that a person simply acknowledging they were not a U.S. citizen was sufficient grounds for a warrantless arrest.

Newly released evidence submitted with the motion — including body-camera footage, internal text messages and directives from ICE leadership — offered additional examples of how arrests have unfolded. In one previously unreleased clip, a group of agents approach a man walking two small dogs in a parking lot. A woman nearby tells agents in Spanish that the man does have legal documentation, he simply didn’t bring it with him. When she says, “Salió a caminar sus perros” — he went out to walk his dogs — an agent responds that he doesn’t understand. Another agent tells her it’s simply “the law” and that she is welcome to file a complaint. At no point in the footage do agents ask the man where he lives, whether he has a job or whether he has family in the area — the kind of information courts have said is required before a warrantless arrest can be made.

Attorneys also raised concerns about conditions inside immigration detention facilities, arguing that poor treatment appears designed to pressure detainees into agreeing to voluntary deportation. One detainee, identified in court filings only by the initials D.V.V., said he was repeatedly pressured to sign paperwork he didn’t understand while held at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County.

“I asked to see the form. The second time, the officers took me to a meeting room where a man told me they would force me to sign if I refused to sign,” he stated in a sworn declaration. “When I refused, they brought in a bigger man who said he would force me to sign. It seemed like they were trying to intimidate me.”

Another declaration described the lasting psychological toll of detention. A longtime tamale vendor who has lived in the United States for more than three decades wrote about the emotional aftermath of being held for five months at Adelanto.

“I want to be strong and move on, but I am struggling. I feel incredible sadness. I am not the same man I was before I was detained. I feel like a stranger to myself,” he wrote. “Sometimes I cannot hold in all my emotions and I just cry for a long time. At night, I can’t sleep.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Judge Set to Limit Immigration Agents’ Tactics in L.A. Raids appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The case centers on Officer Nathaniel Partridge, who on Sept. 17, 2017, turned in his patrol vehicle almost four hours before his shift was scheduled to end and drove the 35 miles home — then collected overtime pay for hours he never worked. Court records show it wasn’t an isolated incident; Partridge did the same thing on at least two other occasions.

He was far from the only one. Investigators later determined that dozens of officers assigned to CHP’s East Los Angeles station had adopted similar habits while working overtime traffic control shifts tied to highway construction projects. Although the agency had officially barred the practice five years earlier, it went unchecked until a 2019 internal audit blew the whistle.

“I took the chance to go home and would fall on the consequence if I was called back,” Partridge later told investigators, according to court filings.

The fallout from that audit was significant: the East LA station, despite being one of the smallest patrol divisions in Southern California, had racked up overtime costs triple those of the region’s largest division. In response, CHP leadership moved in 2020 to fire dozens of officers connected to the scheme, Partridge among them.

Six years later, after the case wound through the State Personnel Board, a Justice Department criminal probe and the trial courts, California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal this week upheld a decision that a one-year unpaid suspension — not termination — was the appropriate punishment for Partridge, rejecting CHP’s push to have him permanently removed from the force.

Partridge’s attorney, David Mastagni, said the ruling affirms a fair outcome.

“Accountability and second chances are not in conflict,” Mastagni said.

The underlying facts were never in dispute. Investigators found Partridge was paid $288.98 for three hours and 45 minutes of overtime he did not actually work, part of what authorities described as a broader pattern of falsified overtime claims at the East LA station. He and numerous colleagues were fired in 2020 as a result.

The scandal drew the attention of the state Attorney General’s Office, and in February 2022, Attorney General Rob Bonta announced 302 criminal charges against 54 CHP officers, accusing them of collectively defrauding taxpayers of more than $200,000.

Those charges, however, didn’t stick for long. By December 2022, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge had offered the accused officers a deal: charges would be downgraded from felonies to misdemeanors, then dropped entirely, if they repaid the money owed. Fifty-two of the 54 officers accepted the arrangement.

When CHP fired Partridge, the agency characterized his conduct as “inexcusable neglect of duty, dishonesty [and] misuse of state property.” Partridge appealed, and the State Personnel Board — while agreeing his actions amounted to “self-enrichment at the expense of the public’s trust” — opted for a one-year suspension rather than dismissal.

CHP pushed back, arguing the punishment was too lenient and asking a district court judge to overturn the board’s decision and reinstate the termination, contending the board had abused its discretion. The judge disagreed and upheld the suspension.

Court records paint a mixed picture of Partridge’s tenure: supervisors praised his performance and recommended him for promotion, and he had no prior disciplinary history. Still, CHP leadership maintained that his actions in the overtime scheme undermined the integrity expected of an officer.

This week, the appellate court sided with the lower court, concluding the State Personnel Board acted within its authority in choosing suspension over termination.

“A reasonable decisionmaker could have dismissed Partridge, and a reasonable decisionmaker could have — and did — impose a one-year suspension without pay,” the court wrote in its ruling.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Judge Halts CHP’s Bid to Fire Officer Tied to LA Overtime Scandal appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.